A bit of a story snippet that came to me when I was on my way to work. I didn’t stop to write it down, but I did remember it all the way home where I did write it down. Wondering if this is the beginning of a new story.

Alex rocked back in his expensive leather chair, the scatter of papers across his desk not enough to hold his attention. Numbers scrawled across the sheets, thousands of them, but Alex knew what they said. Already knew how to turn a profit for himself and his investors on this venture.

Boredom nipped the edges of his thoughts.

He pushed himself out of his chair and stomped toward the door. He knew where boredom led, had followed it there before, and it never brought anything good.

Who is Alex? What are his hopes and fears? More importantly, what trouble has boredom gotten him into in the past? How is he going to escape it?

Is he the hero or the antagonist?

So many more questions than answers!

If this inspires a story for you, please drop me a link to it in the comments.

This popped into my head while I was in the car, and it had enough importance to my brain that I actually remembered it all the way home so I could write it down. Car time and shower time are the two places my brain does most of its thinking. Helping me resolve plot holes in a story, giving me new ideas, or helping me solve world hunger.

Most of them I forget by the time I get to a place that I could write them down.

Looks like this story really wants to be written. Or at least considered.

Have you ever had thoughts come to you in the car? Or maybe the shower? Maybe they were the solutions to problems at work or home? New characters? A new story? Maybe you’re reading something and you suddenly solve the central mystery?

As I mentioned in my post on dragons, the novels I write are in a fantasy world. While each novel is a standalone story, all of them take place in the same world.

So far, all four of my WIPs take place in the human country of Tamryn. I’ve established that magic is real. Vampires are real. Knights smite evil and liches haunt the living.

I have not yet brought it elves. But elves sorta have a but of a reputation…

Given some of the writing I’ve seen, that reputation isn’t exactly unearned. And I’ve gotta admit, coming up with elven-sounding names is the bane of this fantasy romance writer.

I’ve mentioned them in passing in my work, but I haven’t yet written a story about them much less set one in their magical home of Tanalear.

Part of the lack of story writing is me trying to figure out how to add them to my world. Do I just jump right in and give readers a story in Tanalear? Or should I write a different story that brings an elf to the human city.

Bringing an elf into human lands creates all kinds of issues for me. See, I’m not entirely sure I buy into this half-elf business. If you aren’t the same species, you can’t procreate. There would be no half-elves.

Nope, not buying it. Not even beer can change the fact species can’t procreate.

While I’m a romance writer, and I can imagine a scenario of an elf and human falling in love, I promise my reader a happily-ever-after (HEA) ending by virtue of writing a romance novel. So, I’m hard-pressed to view a HEA with a hero and heroine where one of them is going to die in seventy-five years, and the other is going to spend the next thousand mourning them.

Basically, I’m considering if I need to craft some sort of adventure that features an elven protagonist before jumping into the elven world?

This is even harder than the challenges I face as a romance writer because the Tanalearian elves are isolationist and xenophobic, still turned inward even after their empire collapsed thousands of years ago in the Great Cataclysm.

The last remaining vestiges of their once-great empire are protected by ancient magics. Part of their story will be re-assimilating back into a world that now contains humans.

So, yeah, it sort of feels like the elves meeting the humans should be a big, climactic thing.

But I don’t want to confuse readers, either. Readers are smart, but if they’re expecting knights and dragons, I don’t want to disappoint with elves.

I also worry that lots has been written about elves. I sometimes wonder if your civilization collapsed, if the archaeologists piecing it back together would think elves were real.

Given that so much has already been written, I need to give it a fresh enough spin. I like to think I have this mapped out in my head. Besides, it’s not like many stories are truly unique. Amateurs borrow and professionals steal, as the saying goes.

I have given a lot of thought to their queen (Tanalearian elves have a matriarchal monarchy), her son, and some of the new mages. Even a major villain has been knocking around in there.

But none of them want to come to Tamryn. None of them see the point. They have yet to see beyond their crumbling cities.

Hmmm, perhaps we shall have to have an inciting incident…

How about you? Do you like elves? Tolkien or otherwise? Read any stories that take place in an entirely elven world? Did you like it? What do you think of half-elves and half-orcs? Is my science brain thinking too much on this?

This is so amazingly true. Everyone is experiencing life, and you may or may not know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

I try to remember this when I get cut-off in traffic. Maybe, just maybe, the person in front of me got a call from their daycare, and they’re rushing to get a sick child. Or they can’t afford to be late to work because they’ll lose their job, but their kids’ bus was late picking them up. Or they just learned their mother died and aren’t thinking straight.

It’s possible they’re just a jerk. Looking at you man in the red pickup truck that made a left turn in front of me and flipped me off. I almost didn’t stop in time, and pickup truck versus minivan isn’t a pretty sight for either of us. It took me the next half-hour to stop shaking.

But maybe, just maybe, there is something else going on.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. But it’s different when we do it, right?

Except, it’s not.

I was at FedEx the other night to pick-up a package, and a woman was there with two little kids. The boy was being especially difficult, and I could see she was trying really hard to keep them under control. Rather than glaring at her, I smiled at the kids, waved at the little girl, and told her my daughter loved My Little Ponies, too.

The girl was wearing a MLP shirt.

Completely eased the tension, and it cost me nothing. I was able to continue to ignore the boy as the girl talked all about ice skating and Pinkie Pie. The boy was still surly, but he was coming around for his mom and sister.

No idea what happened in any of their day, but I certainly didn’t need to make it worse even if I was getting frustrated with FedEx as it took them fifteen minutes to find my package. A smile and a nice word made everything more pleasant.

I’m not sure why we don’t practice it more. Why it’s so much “cooler” to come back with some snarky comment than it is to show kindness. Why we’ve equated kindness with weakness.

Kindness is not weakness.

It actually took me some time to realize I was making this mistake, and I almost completely rewrote a character because she was kind.

Yeah, I know. I’m not immune to culture either.

Part of the reason why the hero fell in love with this character was her kindness, that inner light that refused to dim despite everything she’d been through.

I was going to change that because I mistakenly assumed that made her a weak character. It didn’t. It was part of who she was, and it made her no more weak than my smart-mouthed character in a separate book. Different, but not weak.

What do you think? Do you equate kindness with weakness? Do you try to see the other side, even if it is a jerk in a red pickup truck that almost killed you both? Perhaps you’ve known a jerk in a red pickup yourself?

I am a romance writer, and that’s what a read. Though some men enjoy reading it as well, Romance is geared towards a mainly female market. First time my husband read one of my books, he dubbed it “porn for women”.

Not entirely inaccurate. It’s the portrayal of a fantasy, a female fantasy, and there’s usually sex in it.

Beyond that, though, Romance does something else. It often depicts the issues women have faced and continue to face. Things such as: rape, feeling powerless, being stalked, not being good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough. The heroine then overcomes these things and finds her happily-ever-after.

I’ve heard many complain that finding strong female characters in romance is hard. First thing I ask them is when the book they’re reading was written. While Romance has been around since before Jane Austin penned her first novel, what it has meant to be a strong woman has changed significantly.

Think about it. Back in the 1800s, a strong woman is not the same as one from the 1950s or from 2017. Society changes, culture changes, and to some extent, we’re all subject to the culture we live in.

So what does it mean to be a strong woman today?

Whenever I ask this question, I ask: does the heroine have agency?

What does this mean? She cannot be a suitcase the hero brings along for the ride. She has to be actively engaged in her own story.

For me, it means meeting the Princess Leia criteria. It means she’s doing stuff. She’s making things happen rather than things just happening to her. Yes, bad stuff still happens, but she’s Princess Leia doing something about it rather than Princess Peach waiting for Mario.

For example, Leia takes the stolen plans and is trying to get them to the right people. When bad things happen (Darth Vadar catching her and boarding her ship), she still gets the plans to Obi Wan.

Sure, Luke and Han go to rescue her, but she doesn’t hide behind them and wait for them to get her back to the ship. I love it when she snatches up the blaster and shows them how to use it.

She saves Han Solo.

She blows up an Imperial moon base.

She leads a rebellion.

She does stuff.

Does she get captured? Yes. But she resists their interrogation procedures.

Does she lose Han to carbonite? Yes, and she rescues him.

I think of her a lot when I think of a strong female character. She’s mostly smart, actively engaged, but she’s not invincible. Not perfect. She can’t be, or she won’t be likable.

For the longest time, all we had was her and Buffy, but that’s changing. Our culture is changing. There have been more strong female characters lately, and even Disney has gotten on board with Merida and Elsa.

But we still have a ways to go.

How about you? What do you think of when you think of a strong female character? Any examples in modern literature that you use to guide you?